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University of Wollongong

2007

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Lost In A Plethora Of Concerns? Match, Mismatch And Hypnotism: The Case Of The New Zealand Public Sector, Bikram Chatterjee, Soheila Mirshekary Dec 2007

Lost In A Plethora Of Concerns? Match, Mismatch And Hypnotism: The Case Of The New Zealand Public Sector, Bikram Chatterjee, Soheila Mirshekary

Australasian Accounting, Business and Finance Journal

The paper is centred on the theme that the significance attached to attaining higher ‘efficiency’ standards in monetary/ numeric terms to attain better ‘economy’ in New Zealand may have led to a change in concept of ‘ethics.’ This is due to higher stress attached during the New Zealand public sector reform to attaining higher efficiency and economic supremacy compared to before the reform. Again, an endeavour to attain economic supremacy at the macro level does not lead to attaining higher efficiency standards at the specific organisational levels and vice versa. The authors suggest that the hypnotic state of the authors …

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Italian Australian Studies: A (Post)Colonial Perspective, Gerry Turcotte, Gaetano Rando Dec 2007

Italian Australian Studies: A (Post)Colonial Perspective, Gerry Turcotte, Gaetano Rando

Faculty of Arts - Papers (Archive)

This chapter introduces the volume and discusses related theoretical issues. This volume seeks to map an understanding of the Italian experience onto the broader picture of diasporic stories, though with an anchor in the Australian-Italian experience. It brings together key essays and testimonials that frame a picture of Italy’s rich legacy at “home”, in Europe more widely, and in the (post)colonial sphere, with a particular emphasis on the Australian experience. The essays collected here focus on the way an Italian Australian story has emerged and evolved in its own unique way. In some respects it might be possible to defi …

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Student-Centred Teaching Of Accounting To Engineering Students: Comparing Blended Learning And Traditional Approaches, A. Abraham Dec 2007

Student-Centred Teaching Of Accounting To Engineering Students: Comparing Blended Learning And Traditional Approaches, A. Abraham

Faculty of Commerce - Papers (Archive)

Blended learning is growing in popularity, but there is conflicting empirical evidence in relation to how it affects students’ exam marks and final grades. This paper compares a blended learning approach to the traditional delivery of an accounting subject to engineering students. Data was collected from two cohorts of students over two semesters and analysed to determine whether the students who were exposed to the blended environment displayed increased participation in a non-compulsory learning task and higher marks in both in-session and final examinations. Results indicated significant improvements in every area, supplying valuable evidence that the adoption of a blended …

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Changing Cultures Of Water In Eastern Australian Backyard Gardens, Lesley M. Head, Pat Muir Dec 2007

Changing Cultures Of Water In Eastern Australian Backyard Gardens, Lesley M. Head, Pat Muir

Faculty of Science - Papers (Archive)

Research into diverse cultural understandings of water provides important contributions to the pressing global issue of sustainable supply, particularly when combined with analysis of relationships between everyday household practice and larger sociotechnical networks of storage and distribution. Here we analyse semi-structured interviews with 298 people about their 241 backyards in the Australian east coast cities of Sydney and Wollongong, undertaken during the 2002-03 drought. Water emerged as an important issue in both consciousness and practice. In contrast to a number of other environmental issues which stimulate more polarised responses, a commitment to reducing water consumption was shared across the study …

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A Balancing Act: Problematising Prescriptions About Food And Weight In School Health Texts, Jan Wright, R. Dean Dec 2007

A Balancing Act: Problematising Prescriptions About Food And Weight In School Health Texts, Jan Wright, R. Dean

Faculty of Education - Papers (Archive)

School health syllabuses, health and physical education textbooks and most recently website resources targeting young people’s health are one of the main sources of knowledge in schools about how individuals should live their lives and come to know themselves and others, particularly as these relate to their bodies, their relationships and their daily practices of eating, drinking and engaging in physical activity. One of the most powerful and pervasive discourses currently influencing ways of thinking about health and about bodies is that associated with the notion of an ‘obesity epidemic’. In this paper, we use the notion of biopower as …

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Trans-Chinese Imagination: Film And Cross-Strait Perception As A Historical Case Study For Contextual Journalism Education, S. C. Berggreen, R. M. Peaslee Dec 2007

Trans-Chinese Imagination: Film And Cross-Strait Perception As A Historical Case Study For Contextual Journalism Education, S. C. Berggreen, R. M. Peaslee

Asia Pacific Media Educator

It is a truism that film, like many other visual media, can stimulate and assist the social imagination of their viewing audiences. At the same time, it can also be an implement in the toolbox of the cultural journalist. Through textual analysis of Ermo (1994, People’s Republic of China) and Eat, Drink, Man, Woman (1994, Taiwan, Republic of China), we explore how these two films project the concepts of modernity, gender relation and, most of all, the virtues and inflictions of being Chinese. A joint Trans-Chinese imagination emerges through these two separate films, despite the reported political and ideological differences …

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Public Journalism: An Agenda For Future Research, T. Haas Dec 2007

Public Journalism: An Agenda For Future Research, T. Haas

Asia Pacific Media Educator

This article summarizes the empirical research literature on public journalism as a means to articulate a broad agenda for future research. After a brief overview of the theory and practice of public journalism, it proceeds to outline potentially fruitful areas of inquiry relating to three of the most significant research foci: (1) journalists’ attitudes toward public journalism; (2) differences between public journalism-inspired and conventional, journalistic newswork practices; and (3) public journalism’s wider impact. Following this discussion, pedagogical implications of some of the issues raised are examined. The article concludes by considering the most important questions that future research on public …

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Turning The Inverted Pyramid Upside Down: How Australian Print Media Is Learning To Love The Narrative, J. Johnston Dec 2007

Turning The Inverted Pyramid Upside Down: How Australian Print Media Is Learning To Love The Narrative, J. Johnston

Asia Pacific Media Educator

Print journalism has long embraced the inverted pyramid, that writing style which emerged in the latter part of the 19th century. While still a popular option, other styles are moving in to share the space at the front of the daily newspaper. This paper will present the findings of a pilot study of narrative writing in two Australian daily papers. Over a period of one month during April-May 2007, the style of news in the front pages of The Australian and The Sydney Morning Herald was analysed to determine how much were written in the inverted pyramid and how much …

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Awakening A Social Conscience: The Study Of Novels In Journalism Education, J. Whitt Dec 2007

Awakening A Social Conscience: The Study Of Novels In Journalism Education, J. Whitt

Asia Pacific Media Educator

This study deals with the nonfiction novel in journalism ethics, literary journalism, media studies, newsgathering, and reporting and writing classes. We are often confronted with the mistaken notion that the novel is for entertainment while news stories are to provide information and to encourage effective civic engagement. For some journalism educators and for many in the reading public, reading fiction is something one does on airplanes; reading nonfiction, on the other hand, impacts political and social discourse. The borderland between literary and journalistic study is a problematic one, with some professors in English contending that journalism is hack writing and …

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Framing The Integration Of Computers In Beginning Teacher Professional Development, N. F. Johnson Nov 2007

Framing The Integration Of Computers In Beginning Teacher Professional Development, N. F. Johnson

Faculty of Education - Papers (Archive)

Government education departments mandate that computers should be and must be used in classrooms. Many beginning teachers are unsure of how to implement these expectations. Peter Twining’s (2002) Computer Practice Framework (CPF) provides us not only with how to conceptualise computer use in education, but with the means to practically and progressively integrate computers into classrooms. Explanation is given as to how the CPF can be used as a reference point for beginning teachers to plan and use computers in their primary classroom programmes, through drawing on a personal narrative and linking it to the framework of the CPF. As …

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Understanding Teenager Technological Expertise In Out-Of-School Settings, N. F. Johnson Nov 2007

Understanding Teenager Technological Expertise In Out-Of-School Settings, N. F. Johnson

Faculty of Education - Papers (Archive)

Drawing on Pierre Bourdieu’s theory of practice, this study explored the construction of technological expertise of eight teenagers (five boys and three girls) aged 13 – 17. The qualitative study specifically employed observations and interviews and focused on home computer use, which for many of the participants was their primary site of leisure. All of the participants considered themselves to be technological experts, and their peers and/or their family supported this premise. This paper outlines findings that identify the participants’ multiple (and contradictory) understandings of expertise and the ways the participants perceive they have attained expertise and perform as experts …

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Exploring The Values Orientations Of International Accounting Students: Implications For Educators, A. Abraham Nov 2007

Exploring The Values Orientations Of International Accounting Students: Implications For Educators, A. Abraham

Faculty of Commerce - Papers (Archive)

The internationalisation of accounting education has grown significantly over the last decade, with Australia now being the third largest provider of international degrees. This internationalisation has brought benefits to both students and academics by widening their understandings and perspectives of other countries and cultures. The diversity has also provided a basis for researching the impact of culture on student’s approaches to teaching and learning. However, no study to date has measured and analysed the tensions that exist between the cultural values of students and educators. This paper reports an exploratory study of postgraduate students enrolled in a foundation accounting subject …

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A Social Semiotic Analysis Of Knowledge Construction And Games Centred Approaches To Teaching, Jan Wright, G. Forrest Nov 2007

A Social Semiotic Analysis Of Knowledge Construction And Games Centred Approaches To Teaching, Jan Wright, G. Forrest

Faculty of Education - Papers (Archive)

Games centred approaches (GCA) such as TGfU, Game Sense, Tactical Games are widely promoted as alternatives to traditional forms of teaching games within physical education. Despite a growing body of empirical research and a considerable theoretical literature, there are no analyses in the GCA literature, of interactions in actual lessons. In this paper we argue that social semiotics provides the tools for such an analysis. We give an example of how such an approach might be used by analysing questioning, as exemplified in the GCA literature and teacher resources, for the ways it constructs knowledge and interpersonal relations. We argue …

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Value For Money? Neoliberalism And New South Wales Prisons, Jane Andrew, D. Cahill Oct 2007

Value For Money? Neoliberalism And New South Wales Prisons, Jane Andrew, D. Cahill

Faculty of Commerce - Papers (Archive)

The NSW prison sector has undergone considerable reform over the last ten years. The NSW government now oversee the operation of publicly managed prisons, one privately managed prison and a number of new public prisons operating under the new ‘Way Forward’ management model. In order to establish which approach to prison management offered the best value for money, the NSW government undertook a ‘value for money’ assessment in 2005. In this paper, we argue the cost accounting information used in the assessment process was limited and partial, and provided a poor basis on which to form policy. Even so, the …

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Increased Probiotic Yogurt Or Resistant Starch Intake Does Not Affect Isoflavone Bioavailability In Subjects Consuming A High Soy Diet, Theresa A. Larkin, William E. Price, Lee B. Astheimer Oct 2007

Increased Probiotic Yogurt Or Resistant Starch Intake Does Not Affect Isoflavone Bioavailability In Subjects Consuming A High Soy Diet, Theresa A. Larkin, William E. Price, Lee B. Astheimer

Faculty of Science - Papers (Archive)

Objective: Probiotics and prebiotics that affect gut microflora balance and its associated enzymeactivity may contribute to interindividual variation in isoflavone absorption after soy intake, possiblyenhancing isoflavone bioavailability. This study examined the effects of the consumption ofbioactive yogurt (a probiotic) or resistant starch (a known prebiotic) in combination with high soyintake on soy isoflavone bioavailability.Methods: Using a crossover design, chronic soy consumption was compared with soy plusprobiotic yogurt or resistant starch in older male and postmenopausal females (n 31). Isoflavonebioavailability was assessed at the beginning and end of each 5-wk dietary period by samplingplasma and urine after a standardized soy meal.Results: …

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Organisational Control And The Self: Critiques And Normative Expectations, Karin Garrety Sep 2007

Organisational Control And The Self: Critiques And Normative Expectations, Karin Garrety

Faculty of Commerce - Papers (Archive)

This article explores the normative assumptions about the self that are implicitly and explicitly embedded in critiques of organisational control. Two problematic aspects of control are examined – the capacity of some organisations to produce unquestioning commitment, and the elicitation of ‘false’ selves. Drawing on the work of Rom Harré, and some examples of organisational-self processes gone awry, I investigate the dynamics involved and how they violate the normative expectations that we hold regarding the self, particularly its moral autonomy and authenticity. The paper concludes by arguing that, despite post-structuralist challenges, some notion of a ‘core’ or ‘real’ self still …

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Personal Bank Account Access And Awareness: An Analysis Of The Technological And Informational Constraints Of Australian Consumers, A. C. Worthington Sep 2007

Personal Bank Account Access And Awareness: An Analysis Of The Technological And Informational Constraints Of Australian Consumers, A. C. Worthington

Faculty of Commerce - Papers (Archive)

Logit models are used to predict access and awareness of personal bank accounts. Access is defined as the ability and willingness to use ATM, EFTPOS, telephone and internet banking. Awareness relates to the understanding of bank statements, fee and charges, account shopping around and internet calculators. Newer ways of accessing bank accounts are confined to young, urban, well-educated, white-collar occupations. Awareness is lower for respondents with less education, non-workers, farm workers, unskilled and renting households, and higher for white-collar occupations, couples and those with higher incomes and savings.

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L’Organisation Au Service Des Droits Des Travailleurs Migrants: Le Militantisme Transnational À Singapour Et En Malaisie, Lenore T. Lyons Sep 2007

L’Organisation Au Service Des Droits Des Travailleurs Migrants: Le Militantisme Transnational À Singapour Et En Malaisie, Lenore T. Lyons

Faculty of Arts - Papers (Archive)

La mondialisation marque un point charnière dans l’action des militantes féministes et des organisations non gouvernementales. À la faveur d’une participation à des réseaux de lobbying transnationaux et d’alliances avec des organisations non gouvernementales internationales, des organisations féministes et des organisations vouées à la défense des droits des femmes, locales et nationales, se sont converties à de nouvelles formes de militantisme transnational. Cependant, il est une question qui n’a que très peu retenu l’attention des chercheurs dans le domaine de l’organisation féministe transnationale : c’est celle du lien entre le militantisme transnational et les théories qui sous-tendent les féminismes transnationaux. …

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How Demographic Characteristics Affect Mode Preference In A Postal/Web Mixed-Mode Survey Of Australian Researchers, Kieren Diment, Samuel Garrett-Jones Sep 2007

How Demographic Characteristics Affect Mode Preference In A Postal/Web Mixed-Mode Survey Of Australian Researchers, Kieren Diment, Samuel Garrett-Jones

Faculty of Commerce - Papers (Archive)

Early promise for the Internet as a tool to make social research questionnaires easier and cheaper to deliver is not fully realized. This study reports a mixed-mode survey of 1,100 Australian researchers. When respondents were given the choice to complete either web- or paper-based versions of a questionnaire, the majority chose the paper-based mode. Web respondents were more likely to be young, male, middle ranking, and working in information technology–related sectors. The authors highlight the need to determine how far alternate delivery modes increase response rates. For mixed-mode surveys to be financially and methodologically worthwhile, the authors propose that the …

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Indonesian Muslim Masculinities In Australia, P. Nilan, Mike Donaldson, R. Howson Sep 2007

Indonesian Muslim Masculinities In Australia, P. Nilan, Mike Donaldson, R. Howson

Faculty of Arts - Papers (Archive)

This article is an inquiry into evolving forms of masculinity in Indonesia. It refers to data collected during a pilot project on the construction of Indonesian Muslim masculinities in Australia when Indonesian men arrive and encounter Anglo-Australian men. Using the technique of asking the Indonesian interviewees to comment on ‘Australian’ men allowed analysis of what the Indonesian men thought about their own cultural tropes of masculinity. It emerged that their gender construction coalesced around two important cultural nodes of discourse about how to be a ‘man’: firstly, the Indonesian urban interpretation of global ‘hypermasculinity’; and secondly, the moral role of …

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Constructing Identities - Developing Skills: Cases Of Workers With Poor Literacy Skills, M. Kell Aug 2007

Constructing Identities - Developing Skills: Cases Of Workers With Poor Literacy Skills, M. Kell

Learning and Socio-cultural Theory: Exploring Modern Vygotskian Perspectives International Workshop 2007

The Vygotskian concept of a Zone of Proximal Development (ZPD) has been explored extensively in school education settings as a means of determining cognitive change. Evidenced in settings characterised by social activity ZPDs are present in the cognitive process that occur when humans interact in and with their natural or man made environments. While most research around ZPDs concerns classrooms, particularly in the early years, this paper reports on a study of nine workers who self-report literacy difficulties. The study investigated whether the artefacts of as well as the human interactions that take place in the workplace merged in ZPDs …

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The Cultural Impact Of Information Systems – Through The Eyes Of Hofstede – A Critical Journey, M. L. Jones, I. Alony Jul 2007

The Cultural Impact Of Information Systems – Through The Eyes Of Hofstede – A Critical Journey, M. L. Jones, I. Alony

Faculty of Commerce - Papers (Archive)

With the increasing levels of multiculturalism in today’s business and the proliferation and essentiality of information systems, development and management of IS needs to be considered in light of the cultural factors which impact upon its utility. Hofstede’s work on culture is the most widely cited in existence. His observations and analysis provide scholars and practitioners a valuable insight into the dynamics of cross-cultural relationships. However, such a groundbreaking body of work does not escape criticism. Hofstede has been dogged by academics discrediting his work in part or whole. Nonetheless, far more scholars exist who support Hofstede than those that …

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Exchanging Online Stories: A Space For Both Learning And Leisure, N. F. Johnson Jul 2007

Exchanging Online Stories: A Space For Both Learning And Leisure, N. F. Johnson

Faculty of Education - Papers (Archive)

The advent and popularity of The Sims and The Sims 2™has led to the telling, reading, reviewing and exchanging of stories in cyberspace on The Sims 2 website (http://thesims2.ea.com/), namely a section called the Story Exchange. Those involved in reading and evaluating these online stories include a 15-year-old female named Sarah, who was interviewed about her experiences in playing The Sims, The Sims 2, and using the Sims 2 website, including the Story Exchange section. The paper reviews some literature about the possible interrelationships between gaming and curriculum, and it introduces notions about plaisir and jouissance evident in the practice …

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Profiling Non-Executive Directors In Australia, C. L. Cortese, G. Bowrey Jul 2007

Profiling Non-Executive Directors In Australia, C. L. Cortese, G. Bowrey

Faculty of Commerce - Papers (Archive)

This paper presents a profile of non-executive directors of Australia’s largest public companies. Using descriptive data, it assesses the extent to which these companies adhere to the requirements set down in the Australian Stock Exchange’s Principles of Good Corporate Governance. In relation to these profiles, the generic roles of non-executive directors are discussed and evaluated in terms of their actual and perceived independence from management. The paper concludes with an examination of the need for independence and questions whether competence, among other characteristics, is a more valuable characteristic of a non-executive director than independence.

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Community Service: Including A Social Justice Component In A Teacher Education Program, D. Konza, J. M. Kiggins, G. Brown Jul 2007

Community Service: Including A Social Justice Component In A Teacher Education Program, D. Konza, J. M. Kiggins, G. Brown

Faculty of Education - Papers (Archive)

Based on Dewey’s notion of experiential learning (1938), community service has long been recognised as a vehicle that builds awareness and appreciation of diversity, addresses social justice issues, provides a context for developing partnerships with different community groups, and contributes to personal feelings of worth and fulfilment. As such, it is seen as an increasingly effective form of pedagogy within teacher education programs. This paper provides a brief overview of the literature relating to community service programs in a range of contexts, with a particular focus on their implementation in pre-service teacher education programs. The paper then describes the process …

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The Non-Executive Director Of Australian Statutory Authorities, Graham Bowrey, C. L. Cortese Jul 2007

The Non-Executive Director Of Australian Statutory Authorities, Graham Bowrey, C. L. Cortese

Faculty of Commerce - Papers (Archive)

This paper is based on a review of the board composition of material Commonwealth Statutory Authorities with particular focus on the profile of non-executive directors. The analysis examines the mix of non-executive directors gender, remuneration, length of board membership and the number of other directorships held and The paper will review the roles of directors and outline a number of additional requirements these directors have in comparison to directors of private sector organisations and highlight the paradoxial requirement of independence. The paper concludes questioning the need for independent directors (if there are any) on the boards of Commonwealth Statutory Authorities.

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Quasi-Monte Carlo For Highly Structured Generalised Response Models, I. H. Sloan, F. Y. Kuo, W. T. Dunsmuir, M. Wand, R. S. Womersley Jul 2007

Quasi-Monte Carlo For Highly Structured Generalised Response Models, I. H. Sloan, F. Y. Kuo, W. T. Dunsmuir, M. Wand, R. S. Womersley

Faculty of Informatics - Papers (Archive)

Highly structured generalised response models, such as generalised linear mixed models and generalised linear models for time series regression, have become an indispensable vehicle for data analysis and inference in many areas of application. However, their use in practice is hindered by high-dimensional intractable integrals. Quasi-Monte Carlo (QMC) is a dynamic research area in the general problem of high-dimensional numerical integration, although its potential for statistical applications is yet to be fully explored. We survey recent research in QMC, particularly lattice rules, and report on its application to highly structured generalised response models. New challenges for QMC are identified and …

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A Pyramidal Neural Network For Visual Pattern Recognition, Son Lam Phung, A. Bouzerdoum Jul 2007

A Pyramidal Neural Network For Visual Pattern Recognition, Son Lam Phung, A. Bouzerdoum

Faculty of Informatics - Papers (Archive)

In this paper, we propose a new neural architecture for classification of visual patterns that is motivated by the two concepts of image pyramids and local receptive fields. The new architecture, called pyramidal neural network (PyraNet), has a hierarchical structure with two types of processing layers: Pyramidal layers and one-dimensional (1-D) layers. In the new network, nonlinear two-dimensional (2-D) neurons are trained to perform both image feature extraction and dimensionality reduction. We present and analyze five training methods for PyraNet [gradient descent (GD), gradient descent with momentum, resilient backpropagation (RPROP), Polak-Ribiere conjugate gradient (CG), and Levenberg-Marquadrt (LM)] and two choices …

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Vision & Choice: Ethical Characteristics Of Academic Development Programs, J. Willison Jul 2007

Vision & Choice: Ethical Characteristics Of Academic Development Programs, J. Willison

Journal of University Teaching & Learning Practice

The perceived importance and the prevalence of academic development programs worldwide mean that it is critical that characteristics essential for the success of such programs be identified and incorporated. This article recognises the manifold perspectives on identifying such characteristics, but argues that if it is desirable that an academic development program has ethical outcomes, then an ethical perspective is an appropriate starting point. From the basis of ethical principles, two vital characteristics of academic development programs are identified - vision and choice. In this paper, contemporary conceptualisations of academic development programs are considered first, then characteristics consistent with ethical principles …

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Keeping Pace With Current Issues In Reporting Suicide And Mental Illness, J. Skehan, L. S. Burns, T. Hazell Jul 2007

Keeping Pace With Current Issues In Reporting Suicide And Mental Illness, J. Skehan, L. S. Burns, T. Hazell

Journal of University Teaching & Learning Practice

The Response Ability Project, funded under the Mindframe National Media Initiative in Australia, seeks to influence tertiary curricula so that graduates in journalism will be aware of and able to respond appropriately to issues relating to suicide and mental illness. Whilst the initial multi-media resources developed to support journalism educators have been received well, engagement with media organisations and individual journalists under other Mindframe projects have revealed further complexities associated with the reporting of suicide and mental illness. In particular, journalists have indicated that the issues become more problematic when they are required to report suicides in other contexts, such …

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